Quotes : Atheism, Atheist

"I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say that one is an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or agnostic. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time."
(Isaac Asimov / 1920-1992)

"An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support."
(John Buchan, British author and statesman / 1875-1940)

"If there were no God, there would be no Atheists."
(G. K. Chesterton / 1874-1936 / Where All Roads Lead, 1922)

"When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, "Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?""
(Quentin Crisp / 1908-1999)

"The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept of an actual, real world with its liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against an unreal world, which, with its spirits, oracles, and mean contentment has kept humanity in helpless degradation."
(Emma Goldman / 1869-1940)

"If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion."
(Edmond and Jules de Goncourt / respectively 1822-1896 an 1830-1870 / Notebook / January 24, 1868)

"Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color."
(Don Hirschberg)

"All children are atheists - they have no idea of God."
(Paul-Henri, baron d'Holbach / 1723-1789)

"America's pluralistic ideal does not protect atheism; public support for different belief systems is matched by intolerance of disbelief. According to surveys published in the early 1980s, before today's pre-millennial religious revivalism, nearly 70 percent of all Americans agreed that the freedom to worship "applies to all religious groups, regardless of how extreme their beliefs are"; but only 26 percent agreed that the freedom of atheists to make fun of God and religion "should be legally protected no matter who might be offended." Seventy-one percent held that atheists "who preach against God and religion" should not be permitted to use civic auditoriums. Intolerance for atheism was stronger even than intolerance of homosexuality."
(Wendy Kaminer / The Last Taboo /1996)

"Atheists generate about as much sympathy as pedophiles. But, while pedophilia may at least be characterized as a disease, atheism is a choice, a willful rejection of beliefs to which vast majorities of people cling."
(Wendy Kaminer / The Last Taboo /1996)

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
(Stephen Roberts)

"The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank."
(Dante Gabriel Rossetti / 1828-1882)

"My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image to be servants of their human interests."
(George Santayana / 1863-1952)

"There are two kinds of existentialist; first, those who are Christian...and on the other hand the atheistic existentialists, among whom...I class myself. What they have in common is that they think that existence precedes essence, or, if you prefer, that subjectivity must be the turning point."
(Jean-Paul Sartre / 1905-1980)